


Such Selfish Prayers

by Maeday



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-05
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 08:43:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maeday/pseuds/Maeday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Phil died, Clint looked for anything to remind him of his lost partner; he found Captain America.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Natasha told him, naturally.

After the battle of New York or whatever the papers were calling it she pulled him aside, when he was bleeding and hurting and covered in dust and whatever slime the aliens had spurted when they died and all he wanted to do was find Phil and curl up and have a nice, long nap with his partner. As soon as Natasha had grabbed his arm and steered him away from the rest of the team he knew something was wrong. She had looked him dead in the eye when she told him, sparing no words and only giving him a very plain, “Clint, Phil’s dead. Loki killed him.” 

He didn’t remember much after that. He was vaguely aware of medical personnel fussing over the bruises on his back from landing on his quiver and Stark and Rogers watching him from afar as he sat in a daze. Natasha was keeping a sharp eye on him but he doubted that she would try to offer any comfort. Not when there were so many people around to see her be anything but the ruthless assassin.

The dazed feeling lasted until Natasha managed to bundle him into a taxi and drop him at the apartment that he and Phil had shared for nearly ten years. Medical personnel had muttered things like “shock” and “possible depression” over his head but he hadn’t paid much attention to them because Rogers had been watching him and in the back of Clint’s mind, he realized that the connection between Phil and Captain America was going to be too much to deal with once he realized the enormity of Phil’s death.

Clint had lost people before, but not Phil. Phil was something else entirely. Phil wasn’t “people.” Phil was his partner of nine years, going on ten in two months. He had already been thinking about anniversary plans.

Natasha stripped him of his uniform and dumped him into bed, soon removing her own clothes and sliding in beside him. He pulled her as close as he could without thinking about it and the day overwhelmed him and he soon fell asleep.

Sometime during the night, Clint’s subconscious caught up with the day and the nightmares began.

Natasha was there when he broke free of all of the ways his brain could come up with Phil dying, trying to keep a hold on his flailing limbs and keep him from the knife that he kept in the bedside table, murmuring things in Russian that he couldn’t translate in his panicked state. When he finally stopped thrashing and woke completely, chest heaving and covered in sweat, and he looked up into her eyes and saw more compassion and pity than he had ever seen before, he broke.

Clint Barton did not leave his bed for two days and spent most of that time sobbing into the pillow that Phil had slept on the night before the invasion that had taken his life. Not even Fury had demanded that he be present for the debrief that Natasha had quietly informed him had been run by Hill and Sitwell.

She sat by him, on Phil’s side, too different from him to be upset that she was taking his space. She ran her fingers through his hair, spoke to him in quiet nothings that didn’t make any sense, tried to get him to eat, smoothed cool hands over his forehead when he threw up whatever he managed to get down.

After two days she demanded that he get up and shower, which he did, slowly, and when she left him for a moment he sank to the floor, unable to keep his body up without assistance. The crushing weight of grief like a physical force on his shoulders. She found him curled up in the corner of the shower with the water pouring over him, burning like fire but he hadn’t noticed enough to change the temperature. She had climbed in with him and washed him carefully, inspecting the injuries left over from the battle against Loki and the damage left during his time in Loki’s grip. 

On day three, Stark came knocking.

Natasha answered the door but Clint was in the kitchen and could hear every word she said. She kept Stark in the door, safely out of the space that was Clint and Phil’s alone. Or… now Clint’s alone. He burned himself trying to make coffee.

“What do you want, Stark?” she snapped.

“Aren’t you going to ask how I got this address?” Stark asked with a definite note of pride. Clint poured the cup of coffee down the sink and watched it go down the drain.

“No. What do you want?” 

“I don’t know if you got the invite but there’s a little going away shindig for Loki that we’re all required to meet up for. Fury’s orders,” he answered. Clint could imagine Stark trying to peek around Natasha into the apartment.

“I’m aware,” she said. Clint wasn’t aware of that.

“And it happens to be today.”

“Why are you the one delivering the message?” There was a faint thump that was probably Natasha snapping an arm out in Stark’s way and slamming her hand against the doorframe to keep him from trying to move around her. 

“Because I happened to be on my way and I just thought I’d get a look at the place. Pretty nice digs going on here, Barton!” he shouted the last sentence. Clint slowly sank down to the floor and tried not to close his eyes. Every time he closed his eyes he could imagine Phil in the doorway instead, snarking back at Stark in his best monotone. It should have been Phil in the doorway. 

“Stark,” Natasha growled warningly.

“And I was just wondering if this was the kind of place that would be worth staying in. We’re having a great big sleep-over-forever at the newly dubbed Avengers Tower. All the cool kids are going to be there. I thought you SHIELD babies would have something a little bit more… prison like.”

“This is Clint’s apartment,” Natasha said blandly in a tone that Clint knew she had picked up from Phil.

“Yeah I can see that. It’s definitely lacking the feminine touch, surprisingly. I would have thought that our favorite fashion model would have had a thing for throw pillows.”

“Leave, Stark.”

“You sure you don’t want a ride?”

“Not with you,” she snapped.

“Alright, alright. But keep in mind the invitation to come live with us. Fury thinks it will promote ‘team bonding’ or something ridiculous like that. What color furniture do you want on your floor, by the way? I was going to just go with black but Pepper seems to think that you want something with a little more personality.”

“Stark.”

“Leaving. I’ll see the two of you soon. Bye, Barton!”

Natasha slammed the door and Clint looked up at her in silence when she entered the kitchen. He hadn’t said a word to her since they arrived at the apartment. The only words he had managed were painful screams and whimpers in the throws of a nightmare.

“We have to go,” she said.

He nodded.

“Come on, get up. We need to get you looking presentable.”

Natasha forced him through some kind of routine and managed to get him to brush his teeth and put on decent clothes. She was careful to choose neutral clothing that he hadn’t been given by Phil. He appreciated that. When she finally pushed him out the front door she regarded him for a long moment before stepping back inside, grabbing a pair of sunglasses, and setting them over his eyes. He relaxed marginally. When she closed the apartment door, locked it, and handed the key, his breathing picked up and she smoothed a hand over his cheek to calm him.

Seeing Loki had less of an impact than he would have thought. The sunglasses helped. With them on he felt protected from the glare that Loki shot him. Clint could even work up a smile at the muzzle on his face and the manacles on his wrist. Natasha stayed close enough to him to brush her arm against his whenever he got too tense. The other Avengers kept sneaking glances at him but he pretended he didn’t see them.

Natasha leaned over and whispered in his ear at one point, “Stark looks like he’s trying to strut a runway.” It made him smile slightly, but only because he knew that she was trying to pull a smile out of him. It seemed to placate her slightly.

When Loki and Thor disappeared into who knows where, Stark, Rogers, and Banner approached them, clearly meaning to make nice. Clint didn’t touch any of them, retreating to the car that he and Natasha had come in. Stark and Rogers exchanged lascivious glances. Well… Stark spent a lot of time checking out Rogers’ ass and Rogers looked vaguely interested when Stark wasn’t making eye contact with him.

Rogers got on his bike, Stark and Banner took off in a sports car to go do some kind of science, and Natasha and Clint returned to Clint’s apartment. 

Clint didn’t leave the apartment for another week.


	2. Chapter 2

Thankfully, Loki’s attack did not immediately result in an overwhelming influx of Avenger missions like they had feared. SHEILD managed to take care of almost all of the small things that cropped up - mad scientists, experiments gone wrong, criminals with sudden superpowers, all things that SHIELD had always taken care of. This, of course, meant that Natasha was soon called off to go on missions but Fury had taken one look at Clint and pronounced him not ready for missions and sent his ass down to psych.

Clint, naturally, never made it there.

Instead he slipped out from under security’s nose and made his way out into the streets without expression permission to leave SHIELD HQ premises, something that he had been surprisingly amenable to for about the first week even though it meant he had to ask Fury every time he wanted to go home and come back. He only did it because Phil would have insisted.

New York was still rebuilding from the attack, as it would be for a long time. If he looked around enough buildings he could see Stark Tower with the single A hanging from it although now it had been made to look purposeful rather than the result of angry aliens bombing the shit out of Stark’s name. Clint pulled the hood of his jacket up over his head and stuffed his hands in his pockets, falling easily into a forgettable shuffle that he had perfected when he was on the run from everyone and everything. It was surprisingly easy to make himself look like just another face in the crowd, another person to forget. He wasn’t all that sure if he had been caught on camera during the fight but SHIELD had said that they were wiping out every bit of footage that featured Hawkeye and Black Widow. They wanted to keep their top two assassins secret for as long as they could.

Clint had never understood why SHIELD was willing to put both him and Natasha in such a high profile situation where any of their numerous enemies could see them. Phil had tried to explain once but Clint hadn’t listened. Now he wished he had, if only to have another memory of Phil’s voice.

He didn’t pay much attention to where he was going and he kept his eyes on the pavement for the most part, careful to step over cracks from where alien bodies had hit the ground and broken the asphalt and sidewalk. He avoid knocking into people with easy but after a few times when he did a rather spectacular contortionist movement to avoid touching someone he reminded himself that he wasn’t supposed to be drawing attention to himself and he let himself bump a few shoulders and mutter a few apologies that he didn’t mean.

He didn’t have far to go before he reached the tunnels that he remembered from his days before SHIELD. He did lots of business in New York back then, right under SHIELD’s nose and they never managed to catch him. He ducked into a dark corner opening and entered into some tunnels that went under parts of the street, ones that used to belong to a sewer system but were abandoned when newer, safer sewers were built.

Now they served as a multi layered canvas for graffiti artists. He smoothed a hand over them. They all felt the same regardless of the subject matter. He smiled slightly when he saw an obviously newer piece proclaiming “IRON MAN” in huge chunky block letters that would be barely readable to anyone who wasn’t used to looking at the stylized letters.

There a couple of people in the tunnel, some obviously getting high before hitting the streets for the night, a couple adding new art to the walls, and one guy who looked like he was just loitering for fun but Clint knew a gang member when he saw one and he settled down against the wall on the dirty ground and made himself look small. He drew a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one to give himself something to do. He never smoked except on ops but it was a good trick to make yourself look busy. Someone smoking was way less suspicious than someone just sitting doing nothing. He was going to have spray paint on his ass when he got up but he settled as comfortably as he could get - which was fairly comfortable, sitting in a tunnel in New York was way better than sitting on a tiny ass ledge for three days in Peru.

He spent the entirety of his cigarette sitting against the wall, watching the other occupants of the tunnel without really watching them. The potheads spoke quietly to each other, in words that were meant to be whispers but got progressively louder as they started feeling better about their life choices. The graffiti artist was grumbling under her breath as she worked and Clint couldn’t really hear what she was saying.

The gang member was tapping slowly one a shitty cellphone that had Clint wondering if he should pull out his StarkPhone or if that was just asking for attention. People who don’t have much tend to notice when someone has something special… or at least expensive. Or maybe everyone did. Clint remembered seeing every expensive thing that every person he passed owned when he had nothing more than his bow and the clothes on his back. He had been really pissed at the niceness of Phil’s suit the first time he saw him. Phil wore nice suits.

His phone chose that moment to buzz in his pocket and he considered just turning it off without looking at the text but he pulled it out and hid it cautiously in his lap to check the message.

From Tasha. Of course.

_Fury wants to know where the hell you are._

He turned it over in his hands, considering carefully. He snuffed out the cigarette butt on the ground beside him before replying.

_Still in New York._

Not a good enough answer for Fury, surely, but good enough for Natasha which was all he cared about, particularly if Fury had contacted Natasha while she was on an op to see if she knew where he’d run off to. It was almost embarrassingly easy to get off from SHIELD’s radar. 

But then, he was one of the best for a reason.

His phone buzzed. From Fury.

_Captain America just texted me to ask where you are._

Unexpected and rather unwelcome. He didn’t reply.

His phone buzzed again. From Tony Stark.

_So the word is that your ass is gone. You can come hang out at the Tower if you’ve got nothing better to do._

Slightly tempting, considering he was starting to feel the cold seeping through his pants and making his ass nice and icy. He stood and brushed off his pants while he tucked his phone back into his pocket. Being away from the apartment was starting to make him antsy. He missed the feeling off Phil around him. Even Phil’s scarf that he had tucked around his throat wasn’t enough to make him feel better.

_Do you have pizza?_

The Tower wouldn’t remind him of Phil but… Captain America was there. Captain American reminded him of Phil more than the figurines in the cabinet and the posters on the wall in the bathroom that were super awkward but Clint loved them anyway because Phil loved them.

_I always have pizza. Does this mean you’re coming over?_

_Yes. We can even paint each other’s nails and talk about boys._

He didn’t look at Stark’s reply and he couldn’t help but feel a little sick at the idea of talking about anyone other than Phil and he couldn’t talk about Phil, not yet, not to people who hadn’t known him and cared about him and trusted him with their lives. And he couldn’t talk to Sitwell and Hill and Woo for the those reasons.

He really wanted Natasha back.

The taxi ride to the Tower was a little annoying since his phone kept buzzing and he felt horribly enclosed and unsafe and all he could do was bury his nose down further in his scarf that he was well aware did not match the rest of his outfit. Phil had a taste for the elegant. Clint had a taste for the comfortable. Black cashmere definitely did not go with his navy and neon green sweatshirt. But he really, really didn’t want to walk all the way to the Tower. 

The taxi driver was giving him weird looks when he paid his fare but he ignored it and walked right up to the front door. On any other day he might have let himself in via window just to test Stark’s security but he didn’t have the energy for it and it would just be sad to get in and then not have anyone to brag to with Natasha gone and Phil… also gone.

The doorman let him in and remarked that “Mr. Stark” was waiting for him on the fiftieth floor. He was pointed in the direction of the elevator where there were no buttons and Stark’s AI politely informed him that he would be taking him for the fiftieth floor. The elevator didn’t even feel like it was moving but it was enough to know that it was to make Clint nervous. Ventilation shafts, he could take, elevators and any other enclosed space that wasn’t necessary, not so much.

The elevator dinged and Clint stepped out quickly into a very swanky, modern looking living room. He became very aware of how much he did not blend into this environment. 

Stark appeared with half a slice of pizza in his hand and the other half clearly in his mouth. He mumbled something and waved Clint towards the door that he’d just appeared through before going through it and vanishing again. Clint crossed the living room carefully, making sure to make a note of all exits, even the windows because yes, he could make it out of a window on the fiftieth floor if he absolutely had to. 

The new room was a kitchen and it currently held Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, and Captain America.

And Clint’s heart felt like it stopped beating.

Because it was like coming home and Phil being there in one of his stupid Captain America tshirts worn thin and comfortable from years of use and pizza and a smile waiting for him.


	3. Chapter 3

Clint attempted to hide his obvious awe when he walked into the kitchen. Rogers wasn’t even looking at him, bent over real, homemade pizza and attempting halfheartedly to wave Stark away when he tried to reach around him to snag a slice before Rogers was clearly finished garnishing the top or something ridiculously unnecessary. Banner watched him come in curiously but didn’t anything. 

But Stark couldn’t help but comment once his mouth was clear enough to form words. “You look like a warning sign,” he said.

Clint sighed. “Yes, thank you for your input.” He pulled out one of the chairs with his back to Rogers and slumped down into it, wiggling his fingers to warm them up a bit. Stark kept his tower warm enough that he soon was toasty and knew he should take off the scarf but he couldn’t bring himself to and buried his face deeper into it instead. Banner was still trying to act like he wasn’t watching him curiously.

“With a touch of class~,” Stark went on. He plucked at the scarf without permission and Clint had to quickly quell the desire to break every single one of his disrespectful fingers. “Where’d you get something that nice, Legolas?”

“It belonged to a friend,” he said.

“And what? You stole it?” Stark teased.

“He died,” Clint said blandly.

Stark snatched his hand away with a look that was neutral but thankfully not pitying or disrespectful. Banner made a quiet noise of empathy that Clint ignored and he could hear that Rogers stopped moving for a moment. “Sorry about that,” Stark muttered. He glanced at Rogers over Clint’s head but Clint just ducked his chin and looked at the table.

“Whatever,” he answered, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say that wouldn’t give away precisely who it had been. He didn’t want Stark and Rogers and Banner to know about Phil and what he was to Clint, not yet, maybe not ever.

The kitchen died down into awkward silence and Clint only felt a little bit bad for being the one to have caused it. Finally, Rogers started moving again and there was suddenly a plate with a slice of gourmet looking pizza on it set down in front of him. He glanced up to find Rogers looking down at him with worried eyes that were nothing like Captain America’s when he was in the middle of a battle, plastered on Phil’s office wall. He looked away quickly.

“Drink?” Stark offered unexpectedly.

“Yeah sure,” Clint answered, regarding the pizza carefully.

“Beer fine?”

“Yeah,” he said without thinking. Stark set the bottle down next to his hand and then took a seat with his own plate of pizza, obviously only bothering with the plate for Rogers’s sake. Clint popped the top off and took a long drink while watching Rogers sit down, unfortunately right across from him, damn it.

“So what have you been up to since we saw you last?” Stark asked. He stuffed pizza in his mouth before continuing. “Haven’t seen you around at all.”

“I’ve been busy. I am part of SHIELD still, in case you’ve forgotten,” he snipped, trying to put a little bit of the naturally cockiness he’d always had back into his voice. He wasn’t very successful.

Rogers frowned at that. “So SHIELD’s still sending you on missions.”

Clint snorted. “No, not yet. Not when psych’s having too much fun trying to unravel all my problems again.” 

“Psych tries to unravel your problems a lot?” Banner asked quietly.

Clint shrugged. “It’s their job. I do mine, they do their’s, we try not to get in each other’s way too much.”

Stark was clearly regretting inviting Agent Downer to their little party and started pestering Rogers about some kind of addition that he wanted to make to the Captain America suit. Clint wanted to scream at Stark to not try to change anything - that the suit was perfection, but he decided that it would probably be better to just tune them out and eat what was turning out to be a delicious slice of pizza.

And he realized that he hadn’t eaten at all that day.

When he glanced over, Banner was watching him carefully and he raised his eyebrows in a silent challenge. Banner tilted his head slightly, the concerned look not leaving his face and also not bothering to pretend that it wasn’t there. “Hungry?” Banner asked.

Clint put the pizza back down on his plate, half gone. He supplemented it with another mouthful of beer, his throat suddenly gone dry. “Yeah well I was running around New York for a bit before I got here.”

Banner’s expression made it fairly clear that he didn’t entirely believe that bull crap and unfortunately his question had drawn Rogers’s and Stark’s attention as well. “You look a little thin,” Stark offered.

Clint rolled his eyes. “I look the same as always,” he said.

“No I definitely checked out your SHIELD file and you are not as, y’know, bulky as you were in the photographs,” Stark answered.

Clint bristled despite himself. “Those files are confidential.”

Stark shrugged. “Simmer down, Katniss. I didn’t go through your personal files or whatever. We had to know what we were up against though.”

The reminder of Loki was not appreciated at all but Clint knew he couldn’t escape from this whole situation without being exceedingly awkward and making them worry about him more. “Loki wasn’t too keen on basic human functions,” he said instead.

“Loki didn’t have you for long enough for you to lose too much weight,” Rogers said, forcing Clint to look at him when he was speaking out of habit when addressed by superior officers. Clint might be disrespectful but he knew to be disrespectful to people’s faces.

“Rough week or so,” he conceded in a mutter. 

Rogers was still looking at him strangely and Clint couldn’t bare to look at him. This whole idea of coming to just see him was a bad idea. He was halfway between wanting to just jump on Rogers and see if he tasted like Phil and wanting to run away and never see his stupid perfect face again. To distract himself he finished off his beer in one large gulp that hurt a little on the way down. 

“Look man, if you don’t want to be alone or something,” Stark started.

“I’m not alone. Tasha stays with me,” Clint snipped.

“Well she’s not around all the time,” Stark answered. “If you want to just crash here when she’s out, you’re more than welcome to. You wouldn’t even have to sleep on a couch. I have more than enough bedrooms.”

“Bruce and I both stay here now,” Rogers said.

“I like my apartment,” Clint answered too quickly after that. He stood up and grabbed his plate to dump it in the sink. The beer bottle went into the trash can at the end of the counter. When he turned around all three other men were watching him intently. “Thanks for the pizza. I’m going back now,” he said.

He left quickly and pressed the elevator button aggressively when he heard footsteps behind him. He just fucking knew that Stark had told JARVIS to not let the elevator come to this floor. He almost snapped the hand that fell on his shoulder off at the wrist and Rogers turned him very gently so they were face to face. Or… face to chest as Rogers had more than a few inches on Clint.

“Barton… Clint,” Rogers said with a voice way too gentle to belong to someone who regularly smacked aliens in the face with his bare fists, “We’re all really worried about you, alright? If there’s something wrong or anything that we can do about it -”

“There’s plenty wrong and nothing you can do about it,” Clint snapped.

Rogers closed his mouth but he was looking at Clint so expectantly that Clint felt his stomach roll. He felt trapped between the elevator and Rogers and the hand on his shoulder. “Tell me, Clint,” Rogers demanded quietly and it sounded so much like all the times that Phil had cuddled him up in a blanket with a cup of tea after a bad mission that he absolutely knew that tears sprang into his eyes and he wanted to gouge out his own eyes with his hands for that. Rogers surely saw it too.

“I…” he started, “I lost… someone… in the attack.” He closed his mouth tightly before he could go on.

Rogers looked frightfully understanding and he put his other hand on Clint’s other shoulder and Clint wanted to wiggle free and just jump out the nearest window. “You can talk to me about anything, Clint. Okay? I know what it’s like to lose someone important to you.”

Clint knew he did. He knew about Sgt. Barnes. He knew about Peggy Carter. He knew a lot more about Rogers life than he was sure Rogers wanted him to know. “I know what it’s like to lose important people too, Rogers,” he said stiffly. “It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last. I can handle it on my own.” He shrugged Rogers’s hands off his shoulders and Rogers let him. “JARVIS, I would like to leave,” he said.

The elevator behind him dinged open and he escaped into it quickly. He thought he was going to make it out but Rogers stepped in after him and that was definitely not doing his claustrophobia any favors. Clint clenched his jaw when Rogers stood like a wall beside him, in careful parade rest. Clint crossed his arms and dipped his face down into his scarf.

“Did that scarf belong to her?” Rogers asked.

Clint tried to clench his jaw harder but he couldn’t stop the words that came out. “It was his,” he said. He didn’t look at Rogers but he could feel the slight tensing beside him. 

“So you’re…” he trailed off.

“I’m gay, Rogers,” Clint muttered. 

“That’s… I mean…” Rogers shifted in agitation and Clint was going to kill Stark for telling JARVIS to make this elevator ride last forever. “I’m sorry that he’s gone,” Rogers said sincerely.

Clint glanced up at him and there was very real compassion in the captain’s eyes. “Thanks,” he managed to grind out. The elevator doors finally opened and Clint was halfway through them when Rogers’s hand wrapped around Clint’s wrist and if he didn’t get out of there fast he was going to do something that he would deeply regret later. 

“I’m serious about you telling me anything that you need help with, Clint. You… it doesn’t matter if you last a man or a woman, it still hurts. I don’t want you to have to go through it alone,” he said quietly.

Clint wrenched his hands free of Rogers’s grip. “Thanks but I don’t need help,” he murmured. He left the building swiftly and walked the whole ten blocks to his apartment because he didn’t want the enclosed space of the taxi mixing with the feeling of Rogers’s hands on his body, no matter how non-sexual the touches had been. 

And he really didn’t want to think about all the new little things about Rogers and the way he made pizza or how compassionate he was that he would have told Phil if he’d been there when Clint jammed the key into the lock and shoved the apartment door open.

There was a Captain America poster on the wall in the living room that he could see when he rounded the corner to head towards the bedroom. He clenched his fists to keep from giving into the urge to rip it off the wall. Phil would be heartbroken if he ripped it. It was vintage, naturally. He let out a rough breath between clenched teeth and stripped on his way to the bedroom. He kept Phil’s scarf tucked close to his body the whole night like a child with their favorite blanket and tried not to look at Phil’s Captain America alarm clock on the nightstand on his side.


	4. Chapter 4

Clint woke up the next morning not feeling rested or better after the rather awkward time he’d spent in the company of the team last night. All he wanted was to go back and rewind and never ever go to Stark Tower ever again. He groaned and stuffed his face in his pillows and pulled the blankets over his head. At some point during the night, Phil’s scarf had gotten caught around his legs and he had quite a bit of difficulty when he finally chose to drag himself from bed and try to eat something. He put Phil’s scarf over his head like a sport player on the sidelines and shuffled his way into the kitchen.

The kitchen was slowly turning into a mess without Phil or Natasha around to tell him to clean up after himself. The only dishes in the sink were cups and bowls though, if something could go on a plate, Clint just put it on a paper towel instead, or just ate right out the container. Natasha said that Clint was disgusting but Phil had always understood that Clint preferred to do things like eating as quickly as possible, not because he didn’t have the patience for something more labor intensive, but because he’d grown up knowing that there was a possibility that he wouldn’t be getting more than one meal a day, sometimes less.

He considered the bowls until he found the least dirty one to rinse out and then pour cereal into. He was almost out of cereal… which meant soon he’d have to at least make it to the store to get more. The fridge only held expired milk and beer and, upon considering his options, he poured beer into his cereal for the morning.

It was disgusting but he ate it all while sitting on the couch wrapped in Phil’s scarf and the blanket that always sat on the back of Phil’s chair. He kept the tv off. 

The display on his phone kept lighting up on the coffee table, trying valiantly to remind him that he had text messages to be read and apparently one missed call. He didn’t pick it up. Only Tony or Steve would be trying to contact him - Natasha never made contact on a mission unless she was expressly supposed to.

The apartment seemed very quiet and large with only Clint there. He remembered back when he and Phil had first chosen it - a move that they had made together when Phil wanted to get out of the apartment that he had shared with his ex-wife and Clint would go anywhere that wasn’t SHIELD barracks. Clint had complained that it was too small with a smile on his face and Phil had told him that it would be “cozy.” And it was, with Phil there. They had all they needed, all the space they needed, felt like they had all the time that they needed until they didn’t.

Clint spent the entire day cleaning obsessively, gathering garbage, doing laundry - his and Phil’s -, cleaning the kitchen, doing all the dishes, vacuuming, mopping in the kitchen tile, even scrubbing the baseboards while he waited for the ancient dryer to go through it’s third round of drying one load of clothes. 

It had been fairly easy to put Phil’s clothes into the washing machine with them all rumpled up from sitting in the laundry basket for nearly two weeks. He had just bundled them up with his own clothes and stuffed them in, but it was different when he pulled them out of the dryer finally and carefully hung up Phil’s work shirts and his slacks and carefully matched his socks because Phil _always_ matched his socks and Clint never did. His jaw was clenched every time he folded the dried clothes and when the hamper was finally empty and the dryer finished it’s last round and Clint hung up the last button down in the closet and the bedroom looked as full as it could without Phil, he curled up in the corner with Phil’s scarf and finally, finally cried.

When he emerged from the bedroom hours later, drained, tired, and hungry with red eyes and a sore throat, he glanced long enough at his phone to see that Fury had called and he went to the kitchen to get a class of water to try to calm his throat before he attempted to call Fury back. He was surprised Fury hadn’t just sent someone over to get him if there was a mission or debriefing or whatever he wanted.

Phil would have insisted that he call Fury of all people back as soon as possible anyway. Things with Fury were always important.

The phone only rang twice before Fury was on the other end, snapping, “Took your sweet time calling back, Barton.”

“Yeah well I left my phone on silent,” Clint muttered, cursing the way that his voice still sounded raw. He took another gulp of water to try to cover it but he knew that Fury had heard.

“Check it more often then,” Fury said with less of a bite in his voice than before. “I need you to come in, there’s a mission brief waiting for you.”

Clint sank down onto the couch, Phil’s scarf around his shoulders and the phone pressed to his ear. His arms felt too tired to even hold it up. “I don’t know if that’s such a -”

“If you finish that sentence with ‘good idea,’ I will come over there myself and drag you back to headquarters myself,” Fury answered.

He could only sigh in response. “When do you need me?”

“ASAP, but at least shower before you get over here. If you look as bad as you sound I don’t want you within ten feet of me.” With anyone else it would have sounded cruel but Fury had been Phil’s closest friend for a long time and Clint had spent more time outside of work (as outside of work as they could get) with Fury than any other agent because of his relationship with Phil. Clint knew when Fury was teasing. It was still strange, but welcome. 

“I’ll try not to disturb your delicate senses, sir,” he answered sarcastically but he couldn’t work a smile on his face.

“Just get over here,” Fury snapped in his I-am-the-boss voice.

“Yessir.”

Fury hung up on him and Clint sat on the couch for a long moment before finally hoisting himself up and making his way to the bathroom, spotless from his cleaning earlier. He turned the water on cold and washed himself methodically, not thinking of the last time he’d showered in there, with Phil at his back while his partner playfully made spikes out of his hair down the center of his head. He thought about it anyway and he hoped that the cold water would make the puffiness of his eyes go down.

He wore sunglasses into HQ even though he knew that it made the other agents nervous when they couldn’t see his eyes to be able to tell if they were the right color. He hadn’t even bothered wearing regulation clothing, although that wasn’t all that unusual. Clint had washed the SHIELD uniform that he owned, he knew that it was in the back of the closet next to Phil’s that he hadn’t worn in years. 

Hill told him that Fury wanted to debrief him in his office with a tight, distrustful voice. He didn’t blame her. She’d never liked him and this was just one more point against him in her books, or maybe more than one point, considering all the people he’d killed. She was going to have a scar on her perfect face from the bomb going off. It still wasn’t healed enough for her to put make up on it and not risk infection. 

He was looking down when he entered Fury’s office and when he closed the door and turned around, he nearly opened it back up and fled down the corridor but he remained rooted in the spot because Captain America was sitting in one of the two chairs in front of Fury’s ponderous desk in one of his stupid plaid shirt, khaki pants combinations. 

“Sit, Barton,” Fury ordered. Fury glared at him until he sat down and continued glaring until he removed the sunglasses. He could tell from looking at Rogers out of the corner of his eye that his eyes were still puffy and red, damn him for noticing . 

“Sir,” Clint started.

“Shut up, Barton, we have business to deal with,” Fury snapped. Clint hushed. Rogers looked like he was going to protest the harsh tone but Fury just raised his one visible eyebrow at him and Rogers quieted. 

“The World Security Council is starting to get… concerned… about you, Barton,” Fury started. Clint nodded slowly. The WSC had also never been on his biggest fans although they recognized his skill in his field. Stands to reason they would want him to take the fall for the entire Loki incident. If only he hadn’t have allowed Loki to touch him with that damn spear and a dozen other things that he felt like he could have avoided and had considered over the past days. 

“They don’t want you on missions anymore,” Fury went on, also expected. “And I politely told them to shove that up their asses.” Clint managed a half smile, knowing that it would have been anything but polite. “But I realize that they will want someone that they actually like going on a mission with you should you return to the field. Given the nature of yours and Romanoff’s relationship,” Clint could _feel_ Rogers’s interest in that choice of wording, “it’s not for the best to send you out with her on your first mission after this whole fiasco.”

“So you’re sending Rogers with me,” Clint guessed hopelessly.

“Yes I am. You need someone that is going to babysit you and make sure you don’t shoot anyone on our side,” he said it callously but Clint could tell that there wasn’t any heat in it, “and Rogers needs to start learning the ropes of the way that this SHIELD works.” Fury turned his head so he could see Rogers with his one eye. “You might not be a SHIELD agent, Rogers, but you’re going to be doing a hell of a lot of work with us and it would be in your best interest to understand the way that we work. Barton and Romanoff are our best agents and the best currently functioning example of how SHIELD works.”

Rogers looked a bit nervous but he nodded. “Yessir.”

“Good, as long as the two of you are going to get along just fine, let’s talk about the mission.”

As Clint had expected, the mission wasn’t going to be assassination, not with Rogers on it. It was a relatively smile information gathering mission in DC, so not even out of the country like Clint’s missions usually were. They were to go to a party hosted in honor of the president, so it would make sense for Captain America to be there as a liaison for the newly formed Avengers but there would also be quite a few influential members of other agencies with information to be tricked from them. All in all, not difficult on the surface although Clint was going to have his work cut out from him trying to trick people who spent their whole lives tricking other people. Nothing he hadn’t done before but usually he had an attractive, redheaded Russian in a too-low-cut dress to distracted them. 

“SHIELD will be issuing clothing for the evening so no need to worry about your clothes. You’re leaving in two hours so pack whatever you think you might need but keep it very light, chances are you won’t even check into a hotel,” Fury ordered, commands that he hadn’t told Clint in a long time but were necessary for Rogers. 

Rogers snapped of a swift, “Yessir” and rose to leave.

Clint mumbled a “Yeah okay” and managed to make it out the door before him, successfully keeping himself from getting trapped in the hallway if Rogers had been thinking about it. He could hear Rogers calling down the hallway at him as he made it way swiftly towards an exit but he blatantly ignored him. 


End file.
